salient fact in the present state of the Zemstvo in the district of
Morshansk for the past year is a want of funds, owing to the fact
that the taxes due both from peasants and landowners by which the
Zemstvo is supported are no longer forthcoming. The taxes are not
forthcoming because neither the peasants nor the landowners are willing
to pay them, this unwillingness being in some cases a matter of
principle and in others the result of the peculiar psychology of the
Russian landed class at the present time. The peasantry is neither
sufficiently developed nor does it possess the requisite knowledge
to form conceptions of principle with regard to the payment or the
non-payment of taxes consciously. Conceptions of this kind, however,
obviously exist, and they have reached the mass of the peasantry in the
form of ready-made watchwords or party cries. These watchwords have the
characteristic of releasing the peasantry from some kind of moral tie
or obligation; it is not therefore surprising that being sown broadcast
among the masses at a time of popular excitement they are eagerly
absorbed. In the Daily Press stress was laid on the significance of
not paying the Zemstvo taxes. The idea was spread among the peasants
that the Zemstvo of the present day is an aristocratic institution,
which draws on the resources of the peasant without giving him anything
in return. Such was the elementary philosophy which was absorbed by
the peasants. And now, although the cry against paying the Zemstvo
taxes is no longer heard, doubt and confusion have been instilled
into the peasant as to what is truth, and in what the Zemstvo taxes in
reality consist, as to whether they are simply a “squeeze” or a matter
of public necessity and local interest. Such a question can only be
settled by an inspection of figures and facts, but before going into
these it is necessary to say a few words with regard to the non-payment
of taxes by the landowners. The landowners were not so much actuated in
this case by a principle as by a feeling of alarm resulting from the
horrors of the Agrarian agitation. At one moment it seemed as if the
end of private property had come, and that the only course left was to
liquidate one’s affairs and to flee from one’s burning house, and if
such was the case the landowner said to himself, “What is the use of
paying taxes when my house is on fire, and I am lucky if I get off with
my life?” In the places where, as in this district, there were no such
violent incidents, a cooler argument obtained, namely, “If the peasants
were not paying, why should we pay?” Some landowners, an infinite
minority it is true, went so far in the organs of a reactionary
character as to invert and apply the simple party-cry of the peasants,
speaking thus: “The Zemstvo is simply a peasants’ institution drawing
on the resources of the large landowners, and is incompatible with
State interests; let it therefore be abolished.” Thus the Zemstvo
in its effort to satisfy the universally recognised needs of the
population found itself between Scylla and Charybdis. Let us now return
to the question, which is more important, of the boycotting of the
Zemstvo by the peasants. If the Zemstvo is an aristocratic institution
which would therefore deserve to be boycotted by the people, it should
above all and before all consider its own class interests and satisfy
them at the cost of the Zemstvo funds, otherwise the accusation is
meaningless. A glance at the balance-sheet subjoined will satisfy the
reader as to whether this is the case or not.
Total estimated expenses for 1907-8: 243,504 roubles 60 kopecks
(£24,350, 5s.) divided as follows:--
1. Public health, 61,429 roubles 54 kop. (£6142, 9s.), or more than 25
per cent. of the total estimate.
2. Education, 52,682 roubles (£5268), or quarter of the total.
3. Share in the expenses of Government institutions, 41,204 roubles 7
kop. (£4120), 17 per cent. of the total.
4. Paying off of debts, 36,777 roubles 60 kop. (£3677), 15 per cent. of
the total.
5. Costs of the Zemstvo Administration, 25,554 roubles 58 kop., more
than 10 per cent. of the total.
6. Roads and means of communication, 9816 roubles 90 kop. (£981), or 4
per cent. of the total.
7. Relief and other funds, 9807 roubles 21 kop. (£980), or 4 per cent.
of the total.
8. Old age pensions, widows, orphans, etc., 3296 roubles 80 kop.
(£329), or 1 per cent.
9. Veterinary department, 2150 roubles (£215), or less than 1 per cent.
10. Various, 1768 roubles (£176), or less than 1 per cent.
From the above figures it will be seen that one-fourth of the whole
expenses is devoted to the support of hospitals, doctors, accoucheurs,
nurses; and these hospitals are exclusively devoted to the peasants,
who are relieved free of charge. Another fourth of the whole amount is
devoted to the support of teachers and schools, in which the peasants’
children, and peasants’ children alone, are educated.
In fact, 75 per cent. of the total expenses are devoted by the
Zemstvo to the needs of the peasants, and 25 per cent. to the needs
of the population at large, but not exclusively to any special class.
The charge, therefore, of the Zemstvo being in this district an
aristocratic institution falls to the ground. It might be said that
although the Zemstvo devotes 75 per cent. of its expenses to the needs
of the peasantry it does not give as much as it receives from them.
But the Zemstvo for this district should receive out of the Zemstvo
taxes paid by the peasants for 1907 86,000 roubles (the rest being paid
by the landowners), and it returns them 15 per cent. of the expenses,
that is to say, 182,000 roubles. In other words, the peasant receives
for every rouble he pays 2 roubles 12 kopecks worth of medical aid,
education, etc. There is another argument which has likewise become
a catchword and is used as a party-cry against the Zemstvo, namely,
that the peasants are overburdened by Zemstvo taxation and are not in a
state to be able to pay additional Zemstvo taxes. Besides the Zemstvo
taxes, the following is a complete list of the total taxes paid by the
peasants:--
1. State land tax, about 43,000 roubles (£4000).
2. Canton rates (a Canton is an administrative unit consisting of
several villages), 89,000 roubles (£8000).
3. Village rates, 84,000 roubles (£8000).
4. Compulsory insurance, 91,000 roubles (£9000).
Total, 307,000 roubles (£30,000).
The Zemstvo taxes form, therefore, one-sixth of the total taxation,
but the Zemstvo Board does not consider the peasants to be overtaxed
for the following reason: During 1906 the total amount spent by the
peasants in the district on alcohol was 1,800,000 roubles (£180,000).
The population of the district amounts to 300,000; this means 6 roubles
a head, or over 36 roubles a farm (there being 40,000 farms in the
district), and as the total taxation amounts in round figures to
500,000 roubles (£50,000) the amount of taxes paid by each farm is 12
roubles 50 kopecks.
If a farm can pay a yearly voluntary tax in alcohol of 36 roubles it
is absurd to speak of its being overtaxed by a yearly payment of 12
roubles 50 kopecks, and still more absurd to talk of the burden of the
Zemstvo tax, which amounts to 2 roubles 15 kopecks per farm.
This is the gist of the Zemstvo report of this district for 1907.
At first sight two conclusions might be drawn from it: (1) that the
political agitators and the Liberal Press in general have been guilty
of criminal folly in urging the peasants to boycott the Zemstvo; (2)
that it is useless to try and improve the condition of peasants who
refuse money for the support of the means of bettering their condition,
and spend it on drink. Such conclusions would be too sweeping.
Political agitators have, indeed, done endless mischief in advocating
such futile and wicked measures as, for instance, the boycotting of
the Zemstvos, and this testifies to their total lack of political
experience; but the very existence of such a propaganda, and the very
fact that the watchwords quoted above can be accepted presupposes
a frame of mind which can only result from the persistence of bad
Government and the constant putting off of reform. With regard to the
peasants and their drink, the autocratic system is again to a certain
degree at the root of the matter, since so far from discouraging drink
among the peasants, it lives upon it, the money spent on drink by the
peasant forming a substantial part of the State revenue.[6] And in
cases where the peasants have demanded that the Government spirit store
may be closed in their village the local Government Magistrate has
refused them the permission to do so. Moreover, it is sufficiently well
known that the autocratic system of Government--that is to say the old
régime--never of its own accord took a single serious step to raise the
condition of the peasants by education, civilisation, and culture. On
the contrary, it leant with all its might against the closed door.
[6] To abolish the State monopoly now a Peter the Great would be
needed. However difficult the task, there can be no doubt that in the
present circumstances the monopoly is a source of unmixed evil.
ANTI-SEMITISM IN RUSSIA
The fundamental error underlying the main theories of people who
write with indignation on the massacres of Jews in Russia seems to
me to contain in itself everything which makes it difficult for
Englishmen to understand current events in Russia. The error is that
the Russian Government, which such writers would be the first to
proclaim incompetent, imbecile, stupid, ineffectual, purposeless,
without a policy, shifting, distracted, fickle, wavering, unstable,
weak, corrupt, insolvent, dislocated, tottering, and rotten to the
core, should at the same time be so competent, so united, so perfect a
machine, so drastically single-minded, so unfaltering in design, and so
masterly in execution that one man in St. Petersburg can by pressing a
button have his anti-Semitic will carried out in the smallest detail
in any village of the immense Russian Empire. The great error is to
think that attacks on Jews or anything else which has occurred in
Russia during the last three years has been the result of one policy
conceived by one master mind and executed by well-trained and perfectly
organised instruments responding directly to that one mind. The truth
is that there has been no policy in Russia during the last few years,
but an ever-shifting mass of contradictory currents. During the last
three years[7] it can be said that there has been no Government at
all; nothing but the anarchy resulting from civil war, a civil war
which is not fought in pitched battles--as that which was waged in
England between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads--but carried on in the
ordinary course of everyday life by what are termed peaceful citizens
of the community, during their everyday avocations, by every means at
their disposal. The anarchy resulting from such a state of things is
rendered doubly anarchial because one of the sides in the conflict is
recruited in some degree from the very officials and public servants on
whose service the proper administration of the State depends.
[7] 1904-7.
But why, it will be asked, are the Jews killed? First of all, at the
root of the matter, there is the following cause: In a country which
is as politically unripe and undeveloped as other European countries
were in the sixteenth century, in a country which is at the present
moment engaged in fighting for its Magna Charta, you are certain to
find the phenomena which accompanied similar conditions and processes
in other countries. And one of the phenomena inseparable from political
immaturity, in a country where the desire for reform is struggling
to get the upper hand, is a prejudice against Jews and a desire to
render them responsible for the evils and disorders which are the
natural result of all processes of change. It was so in England in the
days of King John. It was so in France at the beginning of the French
Revolution. With the exception of the peasants, who follow their own
line, the whole of Russia, as well as the whole of the administration,
is a blend like pepper and salt of a numerically large mass of people
without any political knowledge and a strong Liberal enlightened
but inexperienced faction. In the administration, at all events,
the Liberal element is in the minority, since it has been drilled
during ages by the old régime to a system of prejudice and reaction.
The conflict which is being fought at the present moment between the
obscurantist majority and the enlightened minority (beneath which the
proletariat seethes independently, and from which the peasants hold
aloof in the special groove of their own particular interests) is
the cause of the present state of anarchy. The one consoling element
in the situation is that revolutions have always been carried out
by influential or energetic minorities who have finally rallied the
people round them. In the obscurantist element all political prejudices
have strong roots. One of the strongest of these prejudices is the
anti-Semite prejudice, which all Europe shared in the sixteenth
century, deeds of violence being the result, and which many countries
still share at the present day. Only in such countries now (as in
Hungary, for instance, where the natural anti-Semitism is stronger than
it is in Russia) the Government is strong enough to quell it and to
prevent its finding its natural expression.
In Russia there is no government. In Russia there is civil war.
The civil war is being carried on between two parties, one which
desires reform and one which does not; one which is nationalistic,
and one which is not. The Jews form one of the most effective and
capable factors of the former. Therefore it is scarcely surprising
that the Nationalists should attribute the whole evil to the Jews.
They wage war with equal violence against all their opponents, all
the “intellectuals,” only it is simpler to label the whole side as
consisting of Jews, and say that the whole revolution and the whole
desire for reform is the work of the Jews. When these people therefore
strike a blow, the first people whom they attack are the Jews. That is
one reason why the Jews are killed.
The Government depends for its existence, as I have already said,
on a multitude of instruments steeped in prejudice and possessing
no political knowledge or experience; one fact is obvious to these
people, namely, that they are being violently attacked by a formidable
opponent, in which they know there is a considerable Jewish element.
When they see on the other hand their own partisans attack these
enemies, and in attacking them massacre the Jews, it is scarcely
likely that they will interfere to prevent the massacre of the people
whom they rightly regard as playing the most prominent part in blowing
them up. The attitude of the Central Government can only have an
indirect influence, since it is plain, at the present moment, that
there is not a Central Government strong enough to impose its will on
its subordinates. If the Government were capable and strong, it could,
of course, prevent the Jewish massacres, but if the Government were
capable and strong there would be no revolution, and probably also no
massacres to prevent. Another point lies in the fact that anti-Semitism
in Russia is more artificial than in other countries. The greatest
anti-Semites are men who have probably never seen a Jew in their
lives. In the middle-classes in Russia the Jews assimilate themselves
rapidly to the rest of the population. Among the peasants there are no
Jews in the north and centre of Russia at all, and it is where they
do not exist that the prejudice against them is strongest. In a word,
therefore, anti-Semitism in Russia is the reflection of the present
politically uncultivated condition of a great mass of people who are
concerned in the administration of the country. The massacres are the
result not of any individuals, but of the general state of anarchy and
civil war that exists at present in Russia.
Here is a striking example of the powerlessness of individuals in the
matter. When Count Witte took office it is obvious by his acts that he
tried to come to terms with all parties. He wished to restore order and
to obtain a foreign loan. It would therefore be childish to suppose
that he can have desired his administration to start off with a series
of Pogroms, or that he would not have prevented it, had it been in his
power.
But now we come to the question of the “Power” behind the throne
which is supposed to have organised these massacres. That such a
power or powers existed, apart from the Government, working against
it obscurely, is a fact. In October 1905 this power consisted, in
practice, of a police officer of inferior rank who carried on a work
of printing Anti-Jewish propaganda, in which Count Witte was violently
abused without the knowledge of his superiors or his colleagues. It is
also a fact that they encouraged anti-Jewish riots and attempted to
organise them by distributing printed proclamations. But the existence
of these powers would not have been sufficient in themselves to cause
the massacres. Any one who was travelling in Russia at that moment,
as I was, and who is impartial in the matter, will testify to the
fact that no organisation was necessary. There existed a spontaneous
counter-revolution against the “strikers,” as all the “intellectuals,”
and not only the Jews, were then called. That the officials and the
police sympathised with this counter-revolution is not surprising,
since they represent the thing against which the revolution was being
made. Neither General Trepoff nor any one else could, however much he
had wished, have created this sporadic counter-revolution, nor could
any individual in the central administration have prevented it. The
counter-revolution was the logical sequence and the indispensable
attendant factor of the revolution. Only the officials who did
sympathise with this counter-revolution whenever massacres occurred,
took no steps to prevent them, knowing that their inactivity would
be approved, even if it was not actually encouraged and directly
instigated by the Dark Powers behind or alongside of the Government,
and knowing also that the Government itself would be powerless to
punish them. They felt they were on the Right side and that, whoever
might be blamed, they would be immune.
With regard to the Jewish massacres, which took place in the south-west
of Russia before the revolutionary movement, there is more to be said.
The anti-Jewish riots there are mainly the result of the special
legislation to which the Jews are subjected. But I will discuss this
matter in the next chapter.
PRINCE OUROUSOV’S MEMOIRS[8]
A small book has lately been published in Russia which perhaps throws
more light on the subject of the Russian Administration and the causes
of the troubles through which Russia is at present going than any
other work which has appeared during the last five years in Russia
or elsewhere. This book is a volume of Memoirs by Prince Ourousov.
Prince Ourousov took his degree in the Moscow University in 1885, and
after being employed in the Zemstvo administration in the government
of Kalouga he was appointed Vice-Governor of the province of Tambov in
1902; towards the end of May 1903, he suddenly, and, as far as he was
concerned, unexpectedly, received a telegram from the Ministry of Home
Affairs appointing him Governor of Bessarabia. The volume which has
now appeared from his pen consists of a record of his administrative
rule in Bessarabia, which lasted from 1903-4. It is a portion of a
larger work covering a period from 1872-1906, the publication of which
Prince Ourousov has put off to a later date.
[8] Since this was written a translation of Prince Ourousov’s book has
been published in English by Messrs. Harper & Bros.
Prince Ourousov writes in the preface that he has been led to publish
this section of his Memoirs immediately by the rapid development of
political life in Russia; he considers that nothing which can throw
any light on the conditions of administrative life, the reform and
transformation of which are the main object and task of the thinking
population of Russia at this moment, should be concealed, and in
publishing these recollections it is his object to give an accurate
account, derived from first-hand knowledge, of those administrative
proceedings with regard to which Prince Ourousov states there prevails
a completely wrong impression, side by side with wild exaggerations.
The interest and importance of the book are immense, and it is
earnestly to be hoped that the book will speedily be translated into
English, because it provides the exact kind of knowledge for which
Englishmen are continually asking in regard to Russia.
There are two questions which Englishmen who are interested in Russian
political life are continually asking: first, “What is it all about?”
and, secondly, “Why are the Jews killed in Russia?” In connection with
the first question I have heard Englishmen, after their first journey
to Russia, ask questions such as these: “What do the Liberals want? Do
they know themselves?” On the other hand, we have been flooded with
books of all kinds by Englishmen, by Russians, and by Germans, who have
obscured the Jewish and indeed every other question in their zeal to
prove that the Central Government in Russia has for the last five years
combined the qualities which a Babu journalist in India once attributed
to Lord Cromer: “The oiliness of a Chadband and the malignity of a
fiend.”
This book of Prince Ourousov’s throws a flood of light on both these
questions. It shows, not by any enunciation of doctrinaire principles
or political theories but by a record of facts, the causes of the evils
of the present administrative system, and it points out (by fact,
and not by theory) where reform is needed, why reform is needed, and
how it can be effected. It also provides the reader with a clear idea
of the Jewish question and its possible solution. Prince Ourousov was
a member of the first Duma. The speech he made in a debate on the
Jewish question not only made a great stir in Russia and in Europe,
but was certainly the most statesmanlike utterance that has proceeded
from the lips of a member of the Opposition since the struggle for
constitutional reform opened in 1905. Prince Ourousov’s plain speaking
on this occasion won for him the applause of the Liberals and the
hatred of the reactionaries. It must also be borne in mind that
Prince Ourousov was a member of Count Witte’s administration before
the opening of the first Duma, which he left owing to his disgust
at the proceedings of certain officials connected with the Minister
of the Interior. He will not, therefore, be suspected of partiality
towards the autocratic régime and its scaffolding of bureaucrats. It
is, therefore, all the more remarkable to find in this book no trace
of unfairness or exaggeration towards the representatives of the old
régime. The book is fair, luminous, and honest, and here at last we
have the truth about Russia unleavened by political bias, unvarnished
by cheap sensationalism, and not distorted by doctrinaire principles
and theory. Besides which the book is in itself, and on account of the
facts it records, of surpassing interest and amusement to the ordinary
reader.
When Prince Ourousov was appointed Governor of Bessarabia he says
that he knew no more about that province than he did of New Zealand.
The foreign newspapers had been full of the Jewish Pogrom which had
occurred in Kishineff from 7th April to 9th April 1903. They had openly
accused the Russian Government of having instigated the disorders, and
a letter was published in an English newspaper, said to be written by
Plehve, then Minister of the Interior, to the Governor of Bessarabia,
von Raaben, containing clear hints not to interfere with the doings of
the anti-Jewish rioters. I will quote Prince Ourousov’s appreciation
of this letter later on. Before leaving for Kishineff Prince Ourousov
was received by Plehve. The Minister’s final injunction to him, he
says, was, word for word, the following: “I give you no advice and no
directions. You are entirely independent. Act as you please, as long
as the results are good. I will say only one final word: Let us have
as few speeches as possible, and as little sentimental Hebrophilism.”
These words, Prince Ourousov adds, proved Plehve’s perspicacity,
since during his Administration he made several speeches, and he left
Kishineff with the established reputation of being a Hebrophil.
When Prince Ourousov arrived in Kishineff he was met by his
predecessor, General von Raaben. In mentioning him Prince Ourousov
writes as follows: “I wish before all things in the clearest possible
manner to refute the accusations made against Raaben of complicity
in the Jewish Pogrom, and to explode the legend of the letter which
he is said to have received on this subject from the Minister of the
Interior. Apart from the fact that Plehve insisted on the peremptory
dismissal of Raaben, it is improbable that the Minister would have
relied in such a case on a man whose gentleness and straightness would
have excluded all possibility of his executing such a cruel, diabolical
plan. I do not mean to imply that I consider the Minister capable of
having been the initiator of the Pogrom. On the other hand, I think
that Plehve was too clever and too experienced to have recourse to
such means in his struggle with the Jews, in spite of his hatred
towards them. But if Plehve might consider that the Pogrom would have
disagreeable consequences for the Government, Raaben was incapable,
owing to his character and his qualities, of organising and executing
a massacre. This is not only my own conviction, but it is shared by
all his fellow-workers, and by the local representatives of the Jewish
commune whose opinion is of special weight.”